"No nation should accept rockets being fired into its borders or terrorists tunneling into its territory," US President Barack Obama declared. "Its territory,” Mr. Obama? Really? At the moment, well over 300 Palestinians have died, most of them civilians, but apparently, Israel is still defending itself. "Perception is reality” is a very common phrase used in the English language. The way we perceive things during the current Gaza conflict is based on what the media (print, video, etc) tells us is the reality. Just as Albert Einstein said: "Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.” The current reality we are being fed by most of the world's media is the narrative that the Israelis are forced to orchestrate multiple airstrikes (and now even instigate a ground invasion) on Gaza due to the relentless rocket attacks by Hamas on “Israeli soil”. Also, that Hamas refused the cease-fire offering which Israel had unilaterally accepted. The bad guys are extremely obvious in this narrative. However, if we look at the situation from an alternative point of view, we can vividly see the many flaws in the picture painted by the Western media. Even if we do take for granted the idea that the Palestinians have no right to the land of Israel, and that the people firing the rockets are not fighting to reclaim the country that is rightfully theirs but are in fact terrorists, then what about the children among the 300 casualties, what was their crime? What about people, born and raised in Gaza, who had nothing to with any rockets until one day a missile landed on their homes? Are those people just collateral damage? Why is it that the world media doesn't report that Israeli MP Ayelet Shaked openly calls for genocide, saying even that the mothers of Palestinians should be murdered? "This Israeli policy is no different than Hitler's mentality," that is how Turkish PM Erdogan saw things, and when Israeli MPs openly declare this to be a war against Palestinians not just against Hamas, then it is very difficult to say that Erdogan has got it wrong. For years and years, we have heard about how the Jewish people have suffered throughout history and about how Palestinians are hell-bent on destroying Israel and killing its citizens. But now the time has come to tell the other side of the story, because, at the end of the day, perception is not reality. Reality is reality. The reality of the matter is that hundreds of innocent men, women and children are dead but the world remains silent. Western leaders are openly condoning this barbaric attack, and the most ominous reality is that the leaders of the Muslim world apparently don't care. We, Muslims, were supposed to be brothers... Bilal Waheed
